American women are increasingly selecting their families' mobile tech, and paying the bills too, according to the latest figures from US wireless trade body CTIA.
The company asked just over 1,000 women within families who was calling the wireless shots. Around 94 per cent told the CTIA they were "primarily responsible or …

I guess it proves the old adage...

Interesting difference in the sexes

Women are much less swayed by "shiny new", and respond more to the *relevant* and *demonstrated* potential.

Case in hand - my wife. We're not flush, so every penny spent needs to be justified. Hence, no matter how "shiny new" things are, I can't justify them, so they go unbought.

Come last year, when we are attending a medical appointment for her, and are given a choice of dates ... I whip out my work phone, and check upcoming diary, create an appointment.

"Don't forget to put it in your work calendar when we get home" says Mrs.

"No need it syncs automatically" say I.

"Really ?" says Mrs JP. "How ?"

So I explain about online calendars, WIndows live, smartphones ... result. She wanted one THERE and THEN. And now has one.

The thing is, I suggested this 18 months ago, to a general "uh huh". When I reminded here of this (and at least she was gracious enough to admit it) she said she "couldn't understand how it would benefit her" ... it needed a practical example to underscore what I was saying.

Definitive evidence

And only...

In my experiance...

The bloke says "ooo that one looks good" because hes drawn in by the new shiny shiny,

She buys it, on his recommendation, not caring about all the pointless stuff that he says makes it good. After about an hour with the new phone, the lady says "i cant use this, its too big/small/hard to text/not pink/too pink/doesn't have bbm because its not a bb/has rubbish battery life/keeps using my data and i don't know how to tell it not to"

so she either

a) returns it, and gets a different one

b) starts using the blokes phone (that shes already used to using), and the bloke has an excuse to get a new one ( A Galaxy S II? A 4GS? no? ok, well give me mine back then... oh? 4GS it is then)

The phrase "primarily responsible or involved" - as opposed to just "primarily responsible" - hides a lot. It's being spun as "women are making more purchasing decisions than men", but I don't think that's what it says. If a couple discuss what to buy, then both are involved; yes, it means there are merits to advertising to both men and women, but that's not the same as saying that you *only* need to advertise to the women.

Would it be this big news if they just said "In 95% of families, women are involved in deciding how money is spent..."?

The other thing is that these are individual items - one per person, not one per family. It's not that surprising that each person would make the decision on their own phone etc. - nor that they'd pay their own bill.

It'd be interesting to see a more detailed break down of the statistics - of course, these will rarely make the press release, especially if they don't say what the person writing the press release wants them too.

@stuart

My thoughts exactly - they should have just said that 100% of respondents said that they were either involved or not involved. But that seems to be standard practice with outfits like this isn't it? You decide the point you are going to make and then group the stats to make it look like it proves your point.

Ask and you shall receive

> asked just over 1,000 women within families ... Around 94 per cent ... were "primarily responsible or involved"

As a control, it would be interesting to know what the reply would have been if they'd asked 1000 men *within families*[1] the same question. I suspect the answer would have been roughly the same.

[1] a further "reveal" would have been to discover if, given a very high divorce rate, those women had anyone else who *could* contribute to the decision making process. Since these days a "family" does not necessarily mean there's a man about the house.

Question the statistics, question the method

I know a lot of people will have already asked the first question, of what it really means, but I want to add another dimension to this, specifically: how were these questions asked?

I ask this because my Wife does a lot of online surveys, though valued opinions or whatever, and they pay you to take surveys. Not much, admittedly, usually not more than a pound per survey, but even so. After the usual demographics of sex, age and so on, many will ask "Are you the primary decision-maker about X?" with options of you, jointly and no. Now, you can pretty well guarantee that those who answer "No" will be booted out of the process and not be paid, so pretty well everyone will either say yes or jointly.

re: paid surveys

When I did these things I used to do the same, absolutely no point spending a few mins to fill out the start of a paid survey to answer no to a question you know will result in booting from said survey and no payment. So survey is skewed to start with, then if you are going to lie, you may as well pick 'A' on everything with a few 'B's and 'C' to make it look like you aren't making it up.

So I'd say 90% of paid surveys replies are worthless - and 66% of statistics are made up on the spot

Re: If Momma Ain't Happy, No One Is...

She pays the bills in our house, but neither of us are much concerned with shiny. I have a work issued Blackberry, and she has a prepaid Blackberry that I found for her. She doesn't care about mail or texts on the phone though. She just makes about $10 to $15 worth of calls a month.

Ahhhh...

".....wife who took responsibility for paying the regular bills, between feeding children and keeping house while her besuited (and, quite possibly, pipe-smoking) husband was out earning the daily bread."